


in the surplus I've been starving

by Kaywinnit



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotionally Repressed, M/M, Minor Hatake Kakashi/Umino Iruka, Past Hyuuga Hinata/Uzumaki Naruto, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-20 23:09:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20683481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaywinnit/pseuds/Kaywinnit
Summary: Ino grins at her. “I don’t have much data, but. Hear me out.”“I will if you spill it,” Sakura says, crossing her legs and leaning back in her chair. She rubs at her temples in a show of a headache that is threatening, but not yet present. Trust Ino to build it up; nothing is ever straightforward, and everything is at maximum shock value. If she says anything about Naruto and Shikamaru being friends and hey, ain’t that a surprise? Sakura might just murder her, paperwork be damned.“I think Naruto’s in love with Shikamaru."In which Naruto has grown up, Shikamaru hasn't, and Sakura just wants to do her paperwork in peace.





	in the surplus I've been starving

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Surplus by Spectre Jones: https://youtu.be/_VHod4TTWCQ
> 
> Not my best written work, but I started it about a year ago and never got around to finishing it. I tried to do so tonight, and it's not the greatest, but it hopefully adds to the community.

“Is something wrong with Naruto?” Shikamaru asks, appearing in front of Sakura’s desk so abruptly that she starts and almost knocks a glass of water over all her nearly stacked paperwork. “Sorry,” he says sheepishly as she glowers at him, moving the water very far away from the hours of work she’s just completed. 

“You’re an asshole,” she tells him sourly, “But besides getting over him and Hinata breaking up, I don’t think he’s been acting out of sorts. Why?”

Shikamaru purses his lips and looks to the side. His face is too sharp for confusion; it doesn’t sit well on his high cheekbones. He would be a more handsome guy if he smiled more. “Just…there’s something odd about interacting with him lately. I can’t put my finger on it.”

“How so?” Sakura doesn’t really care about Shikamaru – he’s always been linked with Ino in her mind, for one, and beyond that, he’s so flat and apathetic that it can make connecting with him feel impossible. But she cares a great deal about Naruto, and he seems to like Shikamaru a startling amount. Naruto’s been going through informal training for ascending to Hokage – battle plans, strategy, diplomacy; the boring stuff that it’s astounding he’s any good at – and Shikamaru has been by his side for most of it. Sakura’s not sure if the arrangement is an official one or not, or who told Shikamaru to do it, but Shikamaru seems to be taking the duty of instructing Naruto very seriously. They had always had a bit of an odd relationship, on the edges of the social circles more than anyone else and so companions by convenience rather than any real choice, but now it seems like an actual friendship. 

“He keeps looking at me,” Shikamaru groans, frustrated. His slouch is very stiff, and he must be ripping holes in his pockets with how deeply his hands are trust into them. As they progressed into their twenties, Shikamaru’s wiry strength had only been increasing. He’s the most deceptively strong person from their cohort, besides Hinata. It’s hard to see under his baggy clothes and his laziness, but there’s a definition to him that he hadn’t had before.

“Looking at people is normal behavior, even if that person is Naruto,” Sakura says flatly. She’s starting to get a little frustrated, on top of being annoyed with him for scaring her. She isn’t close to Shikamaru anyway, and she has no idea why he thought she would be the appropriate person to talk to. Ino actually likes him; she could deal with his nonsense. 

“But he does it only when he thinks I’m not looking at him,” Shikamaru mumbles, looking a little irritated. “And he keeps bringing me food – it’s so weird, I’ve told him a thousand times that I can get my own meals.”

“You are doing him a favor by helping him with all this knowledge he needs before he can be nominated to be Hokage, though,” Sakura points out, “And Naruto has always firmly believed that food is the greatest gift that can be given.”

“This is different, though,” Shikamaru insists, leaning over and putting his hands flat on her desk. He’s staring at her in a distinctly uncomfortable way, like he thinks she knows the answers and is just keeping it from him for laughs. And yeah, she might have if she knew anything about this, but she’s genuinely mystified herself. “It feels like he…I don’t know. Like he’s trying to reach something he won’t get, and I’m keeping it from him. I can’t describe it, but there’s just something off these days. He seems sad and distracted.” 

“…Have you tried talking to him?” she suggests, although she knows he probably hasn’t. Shikamaru just stares at her impassively, nose wrinkled like he’s pondering how on earth she could even think of asking him that. Useless man.

“Look, Naruto hasn’t said anything to me about anything new in his life, and if he had, it would have been in confidence, which I don’t break. What is going on seems like normal behavior, and I think you’re reading too much into it. You can ask him if you want, but I have no information for you,” Sakura says blandly, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring at him.  
Shikamaru scowls at her. “But what if something is actually wrong? Don’t you care?”

Sakura shrugs, and picks up a piece of paper, trying to give the indication that she is very busy and important, and Shikamaru should go away. “I do care, but I think the actual problem here is maybe something is wrong and you don’t want to be an adult and actually deal with it on your own. Don’t dump your nonsense on me; I’ve got enough of it. If you care at all about Naruto, you’d get over your own neuroses to be an actual friend to him, and not just a companion when it’s convenient for you.”

He’s stock-still, eyebrows drawn together and spots of red forming on his cheeks. His eyes are almost too-bright, uncomfortably piercing in the light. She gets the sense that that was not the answer he wanted, because then Shikamaru storms off, fists clenched, and slams the door shut so hard that the things on her desk rattle. Sakura stares after him, feeling unsettled. She’s never seen Shikamaru express anywhere near the level of emotion she’s just seen from him. To be frank, she didn’t think he had much in the way of feelings.

“Oh shit, I think I was right,” Ino says in disbelief, wheeling her office chair out of the private room next to Sakura’s – she uses it once in a while to do her own reports when Sai is on a kick with the art projects in their shared apartment. Her eyes are wide, and there’s the beginnings of a maniacal smile curving her lips. 

“I’ll need clarification on what you’re right on, and what proves it.” 

Ino grins at her, and waddles her chair over, the wheels screeching. “I don’t have much data, but. Hear me out.” 

“I will if you spill it,” Sakura says, crossing her legs and leaning back in her chair. She rubs at her temples in a show of a headache that is threatening, but not yet present. Trust Ino to build it up; nothing is ever straightforward, and everything is at maximum shock value. If she says anything about Naruto and Shikamaru being friends and hey, ain’t that a surprise? Sakura might just murder her, paperwork be damned.

“I think Naruto’s in love with Shikamaru, and all that behavior he described to you sounds a lot like the behavior of a guy in love.” Ino sits back in her chair, looking contemplative as she fiddles with the end of her ponytail. Sakura raises an eyebrow at her. “Shikamaru never tells me fuck-all about what he does with Naruto, mostly because he thinks I’m a gossip, but he sure as hell wouldn’t say anything if he knew I could hear. Whatever is going on, it’s got him so distracted that he didn’t even notice I was practically in the same room. He’s so damn smart, but he can’t read feelings for shit, so I bet this is driving him mad.”

“…That’s pretty out of left field, Ino.”

“Eh, not the wildest theory,” Ino replies, shrugging and flicking her hair back over her shoulder. “Shikamaru was always treated Naruto well, even when we were kids and no one else liked him – he never said anything mean to him, and would bring him food. They always request each other on missions. And getting into a relationship might have made Naruto think through what he wants to do in the future, especially if Hinata was pushing him to think about marriage.”

“Naruto’s never expressed interest in men, though.”

“Also not true,” Ino countered, with a dramatic flourish that ended with her knocking a pen off of Sakura’s desk. “He kept talking about Neji’s hair, remember? All that talk about how pretty it was. Naruto’s just never given me the sense that he thought it was an option. Maybe Kakashi and Iruka getting together made him realize it was – he broke up with Hinata a week after they went public.”

Sakura scowled as she pushed Ino’s chair away, looking for the pen. It had vanished, because of course it had – probably got stuck in the vent where all her missing pens seemed to go. She has to clean that thing out once a month. “Well, he doesn’t act as weird as he has in the past. Remember when he was crushing on me? He was really clearly obsessed.”

Ino shrugs. “Maturity gets to all of us. He’s also wearing less orange. He was twelve when he was doing that, and it’s been a decade. I would be more concerned if he was still doing the same thing.”  
She does have a point. Sakura contemplates it for a moment – Naruto has stilled, somewhat, calmed down like a river flowing out to the sea. That burning, fiery energy within him is still there, but he has a better handle on it now. Of course Naruto wouldn’t react to infatuation the same way he did when they were children. Like it or not, he’s become an adult along with the rest of them.

“Even if you’re right about Naruto – and that is a massive if – what about Shikamaru?” Sakura says finally. “I don’t get much of an indication either way from him. And also, wasn’t he dating Temari?”

“Common misconception; they were never together,” Ino replies. “I don’t think he’s ever dated anyone, which makes this a crazy hard nut to crack. I’ve got no idea what his type is, or if he even has one.” She leans forward, tapping her fingers together as she ponders the mystery. 

“He seemed pretty upset earlier,” Sakura offers, like Ino hadn’t overheard that whole bizarre conversation. Sakura is starting to suspect that she’s never going to get back to work today. The hospital’s been running along smoothly anyway; she could fuck around the whole afternoon without too many consequences. 

“He did indeed,” Ino mutters, eyes narrowing contemplatively. She reaches out sightlessly, grabs Sakura’s only remaining pen, and starts madly clicking the top of it as she stares into space. Sakura swallows the urge the flinch; she hates that noise, but it seems that it’s helping Ino work through the mystery of Shikamaru. “The question is more whether it’s because he’s just mad that something is going on that he can’t figure out or if he’s suspecting Naruto might have a thing for him and doesn’t like the idea. Or maybe he’s being the Shikamaru I know and he hasn’t even examined his own damn feelings.”

“Common problem?” Sakura asks drily.

Ino nods, looking frustrated. The flush that always lights up her cheeks when she’s irritated or drunk is spreading across the bridge of her nose. “Oh yeah. It might just be lack of practice, but Shikamaru doesn’t try to voice what he’s feeling a lot of the time and hasn’t since we were kids. I think he’s either afraid of the work or what he might find. It’s easier to avoid getting hurt if you just keep to yourself – that’s what Shikamaru seems to think, anyway. They’re not as straightforward as a game of shōgi, so he doesn’t always know how to approach it.” 

“I’m still not buying this,” Sakura tells her bluntly.

“Well, I think I’m right,” Ino says, still looking oddly pleased. “You’ll have to do your own detective work.” She trundles away, wheels still squeaking. Sakura watches her go as she rounds the corner and vanishes back into the private room and then turns back to her own work, wondering.

~~~

The thing was, there wasn’t enough evidence to disprove or confirm Ino’s theory. Sakura prided herself on her mind and her understanding of people she knew well, and she knows Naruto very well. She wants to dismiss Ino out of hand, but she found she couldn’t. For every one thing that contradicts Ino – Naruto is better friends with Kiba than Shikamaru, Naruto complains loudly about Shikamaru making him learn shōgi, Naruto had only ever expressed any attraction to women – there were odd points that made Sakura think maybe Ino had a point. Shikamaru seems to calm Naruto, and they definitely respect each other. She’s seen them walking by on strolls through the village, conversing in low tones. Naruto always has this odd, warm look to him when he looks at Shikamaru that she thought was maybe just happiness at being taken seriously by someone extremely intelligent, but it might be a little more than that.

She can’t stop thinking about it, turning each side over and over in her head, and debates bouncing the idea off Lee, who she’s been casually dating for the last few months, before rejecting it. Somehow, it feels like a breach of Naruto’s privacy. Lee has also developed the disturbing tendency that Gai has of shoving people together if he thinks they’re meant to be, and she doesn’t want him to do anything to damage a relationship that it seems like Naruto so genuinely values.

There’s only one thing to do if she doesn’t want to be a massive hypocrite. She does what Shikamaru should honestly be capable of doing if he weren’t either so lazy or able to deal with his own feels, and asks Naruto.

“Naruto,” Sakura says slowly, “I have a question.”

They’re sitting under a tree by the memorial stone, the remains of take-out for lunch scattered around them. The day is beautifully golden and lazy, the sky clear and as blue as Naruto’s eyes. In the distance, they can hear the shrieks of children on break at the academy. 

“It’s not going to be a fun one, if you’re saying it in that tone,” Naruto jokes, grinning, but she can see the tension in him. He’s gotten better at hiding it, but she’s known him long enough to know how that nerve in his jaw pops when he’s uncomfortable, and it’s pulsing like a quasar star at the moment. “It sounds like you’ve already bought the grave plot where you’ll stick me if I answer the question wrong.”

Sakura takes a deep breath. Now or never. She can’t be Shikamaru and get out of this, not if she wants to know. If there’s one thing she can’t stand, it’s hypocrisy. “Are you…do you have feelings for Shikamaru?”

She was expecting an explosion of noise, either in the affirmative or a loud dismissal. Instead, Naruto is so silent that she almost thinks he hadn’t heard her, but his face is frozen in a mask of sudden, overwhelming fear. She can see him try to swallow, throat working. “…is it that obvious?” he says quietly. 

“It’s really not,” she reassures him. She’s not sure if he would welcome being touched just now, so she doesn’t risk it. “Shikamaru came by to ask me about why you’ve been treating him oddly lately.”

Naruto’s lips twitch, although he still looks solemn in a way that’s very out of place on his smile-wrinkled face. “For a smart man, he’s remarkably dumb.” He shrugs, trying to play at casual. “Kind of helps, though, you know? I’m not exactly a subtle person.” He looks rueful at that. “But yeah. It…snuck up on me. One day I just kind of looked him and thought, oh. I sat on it for a while, mostly because I didn’t know what to do. And I felt increasingly like I was lying to Hinata, and the pressure of that combined with the weight of what I was feeling meant I had to make a choice, so I did. Not one I wish I had to make, but I did.”

“I still don’t get why Shikamaru,” she says, staring up at the sky through the fluttering leaves. “You seemed pretty happy with Hinata, so the breakup was kind of a shock. Were there lovers’ quarrels behind the scenes or something?”

“I don’t know,” Naruto whispers sadly, looking down at his interlocked hands. His brows are furrowed, and even though he’s sitting in the direct light of the golden afternoon sun, he seemed shaded, overcast. “Hinata was lovely, and I think that another version of me would have been so happy with her. But she took me as I am, and I think I felt that it was too comfortable. Shikamaru doesn’t, even though he accepts me the way I am. He pushes me to improve, to be the best version of myself. He challenges me. I think I need that, that constant drive to be better. I need a partner that sees not just what is good in me, but what could be great.” There’s a shimmer to his eyes that wasn’t there before, and his eyes are like deep lakes. 

Then he snorts, and wipes his eyes, and looks up at her with a pained grin. “Plus he’s got a nice ass.”

Sakura snorts and whacks at his arm. “Way to ruin the moment. He’s skin and bones!” 

“He looks a lot softer when he’s got his hair down, though,” Naruto argues, dodging out of the way as she tries to smack him again – she’s not sure why; it’s just become something they do, particularly to break the tension in emotional moments. They’re both too fractured to be comfortable when vulnerable. 

“You’ve seen him with his hair down?” Sakura asks, momentarily curious. She didn’t know Shikamaru was capable of that – she assumed that the hair just stayed up, like it would take too much effort for him to deal with it and so it just remained as it was. 

“Yeah, he takes it down when he’s helping me with diplomacy,” Naruto says, smiling fondly as he looks out across the waving field of grass. “He says it gives him a headache to read treaties when it’s up.”

“I think you might just have a hair kink,” she teases, “I still remember how you talked about Neji’s hair.” They have a moment of silence, one that they’ve become used to sharing when the topic of their deceased comrade comes up. It’s been years, but she knows they all sometimes wonder what he would look like and who he would be, if he was still with them. 

“But why didn’t you tell me?” she asks, setting back besides him and leaning against the tree. Naruto stares at her, eyebrow raised. “Don’t give me that look. I don’t know what it’s supposed to mean.”

Naruto eyes her in silence for a moment, and then sighs. “I’ve had a hard enough time being accepted as is, Sakura,” he says lowly. “Holding Kurama was bad enough – I had to save the village for everyone to get over that, and repeatedly. Falling in love with a guy – particularly one of a prominent clan like the Nara – seems like an easy way to trigger that distaste everyone’s had for me most of my life anyway.” His lips quirk up, but his eyes are shimmering again, and that nerve is pulsing in his neck.

She hears a noise, faded and distant, like the whisper of the wind scraping against loose bark, but she ignores it. There are more important things right now.

“I wouldn’t have judge you,” Sakura says softly, and Naruto snorts.

“You would have, at one point,” he replies, not unkindly as he smiles fondly at her, and he is right on that – although it hurts to hear that he still thinks about that sometimes. “And there are plenty of people that would judge me for falling in love with him, and I’d be back at square one.” He pauses, and thinks, eyebrows furrowed. “I guess that saying it makes it real, you know? I haven’t actually said it out loud yet, but now it’s feeling more solid. Less abstract.” His smile is bitter, and he suddenly seems brittle, like spun glass. It’s not something she’s ever associated with Naruto before – that he might be broken, somewhere deep inside of him.

“You going to tell him?” she prods gently. 

“Of course I’m not going to. We’ve only just become good buddies. Besides, he’s got to spawn little shadow brats with Temari and repopulate his clan. I can’t push this on him. He’s not good with feelings, anyway.” Naruto is still smiling that delicate, faux little smile, and it’s starting to break Sakura’s heart a little. The cover to the well has been taken off, and she’s starting to understand the depths of the pain Naruto carries. It’s making her feel guilty, like she’s been doing him a disservice by not seeing this before. Maybe she was. 

“I’m here for you,” is what she says, instead of the multitude of things that she’s thinking – that Temari and Shikamaru aren’t together, that it’s not fair that this, too, was placed on Naruto. That she wishes she could make everyone see him the way she does – someone fundamentally warm and kind and deserving of love. 

He raises his arm and she shuffles into it, leaning into his weight. Naruto’s always been like a furnace, and she feels safe with him nearby. “I know you are,” he murmurs, staring out over the field with a wistful expression. “I know I have friends. For now, that’s enough.”

~~~

It’s easier to see the strain in him, now that she knows what it looks like. Naruto looks particularly stretched thin and drained for a week afterwards, and his expression seems pinched. When asked what’s wrong, he says that Shikamaru’s been oddly distant. There’s a note of distress in his voice, and Sakura isn’t sure what to tell him, so she feeds him dango instead and hope he understands that she does care. 

She keeps an eye on them. Their friends like to meet up on a weekly basis, when everyone’s in town, to get drinks, and she settles herself next to Lee and across from Shikamary and Naruto so she can study them. There’s a contemplative look on Shikamaru’s face, like he’s trying to puzzle out the way to victory in a particularly complicated battle. He glances to Naruto when someone else is speaking and Naruto isn’t looking at him, a curious twist to his thin mouth. She can’t read his expression, and she can tell it’s setting Naruto on edge – that nerve in his neck is jumping. 

She’s so lucky Naruto doesn’t gamble – his poker face is so bad that he’d be bankrupt in moments.

The stress must be getting to Naruto, because he signs up for a three month mission to Suna. He’s probably going to gripe at Gaara and get drunk with Kankuro; Sakura doesn’t begrudge him the desire to run. 

But she knows who she does blame.

“I’m angry at you,” she tells Shikamaru as she hauls herself over the edge of the roof. She’s just seen Naruto off at the gate, and the distracted, melancholic smile on her face hardened her heart. The moment he disappeared into the trees, she wiped around, closed her eyes, and fixated on a shadowy, ungraspable flicker of chakra, letting it lead her through the village.

He doesn’t look surprised to see her at all as he glances at her, face tight. She settles down next to him, swinging her legs into the void over the street far below. Their knees knock together, and she debates kicking him to make her point clearer. 

She dismisses it, after a moment. She’s nearly twenty-three, runs a hospital – she’s got more subtle ways of harming him, if it comes to it. 

“You’re being a shit. Why the hell are you being so cold to Naruto? I thought you were friends, you asshat.”

“I heard,” Shikamaru says softly, like he expects to be punished. He’s not looking at her, still staring out over the village to the gate Naruto left through. “That day, with you and Naruto in the park. I was going to take your advice, and talk to him, and I heard that…that he’s in love with me.” His mouth twists, and he drops his head down. Even his ponytail looks like it’s wilting. “I stepped into the shadow behind the tree and left, and that’s why I’ve been distant. I just would have never guessed, you know?”

“Ino has mentioned one or two or eight million times that you might be horrible with emotions,” Sakura says blandly, her mind going a thousand miles an hour. From Shikamaru’s reaction, she’s guessing he doesn’t feel the way towards Naruto that Naruto does for him, and for a moment, she deeply hates herself. In trying to provide the space for Naruto to free his soul and tell her what was going on, she might have inadvertently harmed a relationship he valued and depended on. 

Shikamaru snorts, and pushes the meat of his palm into his eye. He looks like he’s trying not to cry; his eyes are red. “I…ugh.” He inhales, noisily, and breathes out heavily through his nose, nostrils flaring. “I always thought that one day I would do the normal thing and get married to a girl – probably Temari – and have a kid. And years kept going by, and I haven’t done it. And then on top of that, being around Naruto made him break off the first good, loving relationship he’s ever had.” He screws his eyes shut, looking deeply pained. “I’m just so confused. I don’t know what to do.” 

Sakura awkwardly reaches out and pats him on the back, feeling deeply uncomfortable as Shikamaru inhales raggedly. “Well, what do you want?” she asks. “You don’t have to go with him. You could marry a girl. The thing is, you’re not making a choice by being indecisive. At some point, you have to take a path and go down it, or all the options will be closed to you.” 

Shikamaru doesn’t answer, but he nods jerkily. “I know,” he mumbles, his voice nasal. “I just kind of wanted to stick with the delusion that things would work out without me having to put forward effort.”

“Tough shit; that’s not how life works,” Sakura says irritably. “At the very least, I want you to resolve this in a way that stops hurting Naruto.” Shikamaru tenses up, which only annoys her more. “At least learn to act like a normal person around him. He was doing his best to do that for you; you could at least try to return the favor.” 

“How does anyone do this?” Shikamaru asks, despairingly. He stares at her like she’s got all the answers and is being cruel for withholding them. His eyes are wet, and a tear is trailing down the side of his sharp nose. “I’ve got no idea what to do. This isn’t like fighting a war. I’ve got no idea how to get out of this without someone – Naruto, Hinata, me – getting hurt.”

Sakura feels a little overwhelmed, watching him angrily brush the wet streak from his cheek. It was rather unfair, she thought, for Shikamaru to expect her to distill life’s conundrums into a feel-good fix-him-up. She almost didn’t want to – except Shikamaru was important to Naruto, and although she didn’t necessarily like him, she did care about how their relationship would pan out.

“I don’t have answers for you, Shikamaru,” she says carefully. Another tear slips out of the corner of his eye and trails down his cheek. “But I can tell you that you have a choice here. You’ve got more information than Naruto. You can decide to tell him you know, and turn him down gently. You can keep it a secret and work hard at staying friends. I’m not getting the sense that you want to give being with him a try, but that’s an option to, if you’re willing to accept the consequences of choosing that route.”

She breathes in, deeply, and lays a consoling hand on his shoulder. He tenses up underneath it. “I think you’re kind of a jerk, but this isn’t about me and you. This is about Naruto. Love is a gift, something that brings meaning and joy – and yes, pain and heartbreak and sorrow, but those parts aren’t invalidated by the wonder of having someone love you. And Naruto loves you. No matter what you choose to do, remember that you’ve been well-loved by someone, because that’s not something everyone gets in this world.”

She stands up carefully, wiping her hands off on her leggings. “I’ll see you around, Shikamaru. Try to work out that mass of feelings before you choke on it,” she says, and leaps away, leaving him to stare out over the endless woods. 

~~~~

Naruto gets back about eleven weeks later, bruised and scraped up from taking down a whole host of missing-nins hiding out in the desert and abducting people to sell into slavery, but not harmed. He’s exhausted as Sakura gives him a perfunctory exam – she says nothing about Shikamaru, Naruto says that Gaara’s a lightweight. She sees him off around three in the afternoon and promises to bring him some soup later, when she gets off work. 

She picks up an order of ramen for them to share after her shift ends. It’s about nine in the evening; the sun has long since gone down. She meanders through the quiet streets, wondering what her obligations are here. She’s on Naruto’s side, no matter what, but she still can’t decide if it’s a good idea for her to tell him that Shikamaru overheard. She’s leaning towards no, because she’s betting Naruto’s first reaction would be to just leave again, and she thinks he might not come back if he does. She doesn’t come to a decision by the time she reaches Naruto’s apartment block.

She sees Shikamaru, standing in the glow of a lone streetlight, staring up at Naruto’s unlit window like a creep. His forehead is furrowed, and there’s that awkward jut to his mouth, like he tasted something he expected to taste good but didn’t.

“I don’t think tonight is the right night for you to be an asshole,” Sakura says blandly, stopping besides him. She’s too tired and worn out to be polite. Besides the one talk they had, the morning Naruto left, she hasn’t seen him. He’s been skipping out on the weekly meet-ups; Ino said that Shikamaru was either on missions or spending time with his mom. 

“I figured you would say that,” he replies without looking at her, still looking up. “I guess I just needed it confirmed that he’s back.”

“Yeah. He’s fine, just tired. Maybe hungover; seems like he spent a lot of time drinking.” 

That makes a ghost of a smile hover around Shikamaru’s lips; more a suggestion of humor than anything physical. He glances down at her, and his features shift back to seriousness. “I don’t want to hurt him, Sakura. I really don’t.”

She puts the bag of food down and crosses her arms across her chest, meeting his level gaze. “Did you come to a decision?” 

Shikamaru inhales, holds it for a moment, and lets it out, a long, slow breath. “I spent a lot of time thinking while he was gone,” he says quietly, and purses his lips for a moment before he continues. “Everyone expected me to end up with Temari, but it just never felt right. But with Naruto, I think it might. I don’t know what it’s supposed to be, being in love with someone, but I missed him while he was gone. I like spending time with him. I think he’s beautiful, and I know he’s kind. He makes me want to be better.” 

She doesn’t say anything for a moment. The streetlight flickers overhead. The street is very quiet – in the distance, she can hear a group of people laughing uproariously, probably at an open-air bar. 

“You told me that love is a gift, and it meant Naruto saw something worth loving in me,” Shikamaru whispers, shutting his eyes like he expects her to slap him. “And I think I see something in him, something that I can love. Something bright, and compassionate, and silly, and ready to change the world. So I don’t know what I’m doing, or how to progress, but I know I want to try.”

They stare at each other for a long moment. 

Sakura nods. 

“I think you should tell him,” she says, and picks up the bag of takeout. She hands it over, and Shikamaru takes it, bemused. “Do it now, before you lose your confidence. And do it to his face. Naruto deserves love, and he deserves to hear he’s got a shot at it.”

Shikamaru nods, seriously, like she’s handed him a S-class mission scroll. He takes the stairs and doesn’t look back. 

She turns around and walks off towards Lee’s apartment, smiling to herself.  
~~~  
She expects to be told, and she is, eventually. But before Naruto tells her, she sees him and Shikamaru, heading towards the Hokage tower bright and early on a Tuesday morning, their fingers intertwined, aiming secret smiles at each other and bumping shoulders. She sees Shikamaru’s gaze soften, Naruto’s blinding smile, and she knows it’s okay – things will work out, as scary as they might be.

Also Ino bursts into her office, shrieking about how she found the two of them making out when she dropped by to nag Shikamaru into hanging out, so that helps too.


End file.
